Integrated circuits are extensively tested both during and after production and, in some cases, routinely during use after they have been installed in products. For example, memory devices, such as dynamic random access memories ("DRAMs"), are tested during production at the wafer level and after packaging, and they are also routinely tested each time a computer system using the DRAMs executes a power up routine when power is initially applied to the computer system. DRAMs are generally tested by writing known data to each location in the memory and then reading data from each memory location to determine if the read data matches the written data. As the capacity of DRAMs and other memory devices continues to increase, the time required to write and then read data from all memory locations continues to increase, even though memory access times continue to decrease.
Various proposals have been made to decrease the time required to test memory devices, such as DRAMs. The time required to write known data to memory devices has been reduced by such approaches as simultaneously writing the same data to each column of each array in the memory device one row at a time. Other approaches include internal circuitry for transferring data from each column of one row to the next without requiring the memory to be addressed. These approaches have reduced the time required to write known data or a known pattern of data to the memory array.
Solutions have also been proposed for reducing the time required to read data from memory devices so that the data can be compared to the data written to the memory devices. One approach to solving the problem of excessive read times relies on data compression in which data from the sense amplifier for one memory array is internally compared to the data from the sense amplifier of a different memory array. Simultaneously reading data from different memory locations in two different arrays has significantly reduced the time required to read data from memory devices for test purposes. However, combining data from multiple sense amplifiers requires the addition of circuitry and conductors to couple the outputs of the multiple sense amplifiers to comparison circuitry. As the circuit features of semiconductor devices become more compact, there is less space available to route conductors from each sense amplifier to a single location and to provide additional circuitry to combine the outputs of sense the amplifiers.
There is therefore a need to be able to read data from a memory device in a compressed form to reduce testing time that can be implemented on integrated circuits having highly compact circuit features.